


Flowers for a Dead Kid

by Datawyrms (Verl)



Category: Danny Phantom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:55:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24270067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verl/pseuds/Datawyrms
Summary: How was he meant to know people were going to take his 'Oh I’m not buried here, but you’ll be!’ seriously? Let alone that they’ll ‘make it right’ with a gravesite?Written for Dannymay 2020, Flowers
Comments: 11
Kudos: 220





	Flowers for a Dead Kid

**Author's Note:**

> Hello :v I'm finally getting off my lazy butt and putting these on Ao3 too. If you haven't seen this before, check out said tumblr (datawyrms over there too), I've got...quite a backlog to move over. whoops.

Danny had never really thought anyone listened to what his parents would shout about ghosts anymore, at least in relation to him. By now most of the town had accepted the ‘ghost boy’ was genuinely trying to help, or at least wasn’t actively malicious. After all, they didn’t have years of ‘research’ and hypotheses to get over like dear old Mom and Dad.

He really, really wished they’d ignored the part about him being ‘ectoplasm and post-human consciousness’ too.

The gesture was sweet, really. People who no longer ran in terror at the sight of him were finally able to put together what a ghost that was a child implied, if you bought all ghosts were ‘post human’. Apparently some felt guilty about relying on something ‘tragic’, or for not even realizing they had automatically hated and feared a dead kid. Whatever their reasons for it, Danny suddenly found his ghostly alter ego being the proud owner of one lovingly carved plaque in the town’s graveyard. It had been a flippant comment during a fight! How was he meant to know people were going to take his 'Oh I’m not buried here, but you’ll be!’ seriously? Let alone that they’ll ‘make it right’ with a gravesite?

People left him flowers there. Sometimes just one and a muttered word, others would leave bundles with notes of thanks tinged with regret. The flowers sometimes called to him, as if he could feel the emotion the person leaving them meant to convey. It was both comforting and terrifying. He wasn’t all dead yet! He didn’t need a grave!

That didn’t stop him from taking the ones that felt the most of joy and thanks and affection to Sam so she could tell him what kind it was, and if he could possibly replant it to keep at home or in her greenhouse. She’d roll her eyes sometimes, stating that people should ‘stop giving dead plants to a dead kid’, but it was probably for the best that most couldn’t be kept very long, or Danny’s room would end up looking like Overgrowth redecorated as the public opinion skewed further to the positive.

He shouldn’t feel so strongly about these things, or care this much about simple flowers on a grave just because it was ‘his’. Yet it felt right to go see them, to feel them. There was just that impulse, something that made even his icy cold core warm knowing someone knew and cared. When he honestly had too many of the floral gifts the ghost would spend an hour or two looking for more deserted lonely graves. Ones left bare from lack of those to come. Were they that way simply because they had been forgotten because time always marched on, or was it someone who chased away any who would want to leave a dead plant as a quiet ‘sorry’ for their loss? No matter the reason, he’d leave some of the beautiful excess with them. Straddling the line between life and death had made him a little more conscious of how quickly life could be lost forever. That it was something that could never be reclaimed. All of them were tragic, really. Though he could just be young and stupid, it still felt right.

Mom and Dad didn’t approve. Ghosts don’t have feelings, Phantom doesn’t even remember being alive, thanking ghost scum is a waste of time. Yet this was something he couldn’t just put his head down and think of spaceships to ride out the discomfort and shame with. He always had to flee the room and wait for Jazz so he could vent his frustrations. Why couldn’t they just let people care? Why did they want to invalidate something kind? Even if he had been some emotionless thing, that didn’t mean people shouldn’t be allowed to express how they felt!

Her hugs were a comfort, but he always suspected his sister was a little concerned about how much he cared about the graveside flowers.

Just another part of being a freak. A dead kid caring about dead plants just because a living person left it for him. Stupid.

There was probably a scientific reason he cared, but that conversation had been shut down permanently. He didn’t want to know. Whatever it was, he’d manage to mangle it into being some sort of freakish instinctual longing for emotions instead of just a normal, regular human wanting to appreciate gifts.

He had the sneaking suspicion Tucker and Sam had looked into it anyway, but they mercifully respected his insistence on never explaining it.

That, and they all dropped the ‘someone just walked over my grave’ joke.

...Mostly because no one could tell if Danny was being serious or not when he said it.

He did just seem to ‘know’ when more flowers came to rest there, but decided not to mention that to his friends. It was just frustrating that something both he and Sam cared about was just driving another wedge between him and humanity. They both now had a healthy appreciation for the diverse plants, even bonded over some of their shared favourites. Yet there was always an itch under his skin, a weak pulse. Dead, inhuman, freak.

He hated that graveyard.

He hated that grave.

He still longed for those flowers.


End file.
